Cutting the Root of Ego

Dear Friends Near and Far:
I hope you have all been happy and healthy. I am in Guadalajara, Mexico preparing for todays Guru Rinpoche Day’s feast offering. I am going to keep each and everyone of you in my mind during the feast offering.
So for today’s Guru Rinpoche Day, I would like to share with you a key that helps unlock the root of all hope and fear. To really understand the dharma, to practice the dharma, and to apply the dharma, you really need to understand this key. On a day to day basis, where does all our hope and fear arise from? It arises from identity, feeling, belief, and ego clinging. The root is ego, this self centered ego.
What is hope? Hope is a positive attachment. When you don’t receive that or don’t have that you feel pain. What is Fear? Fear is something that you don’t like to have or don’t want to be. So most of our thoughts and feelings are contained in hope and fear.
Now I am going to give you a short quotation:
“Without cutting or reducing ego clinging, no matter how much you want to practice the dharma or live a positive life it is not going to work.”
As usual, my advice is don’t believe me but see it for your own self. So usually I say “seeing” is the first step, “recognizing” is the second step, “admitting” is the third step, “changing” is the fourth step and “measuring change” is the fifth step.
From another quotation:
“Without cutting the root of ego, meditation is just a creation of mind. Understanding is just labeling. Thinking that you understood is just subtle pride. When you really cut the root of ego, you don’t differentiate between yourself and others, and then you will understand selflessness. It is then when the realization of emptiness and compassion is going to be inseparable.”
So it is very important to reduce the ego. My message today may sound complicating to some, helpful to a handful and completely gibberish to many! But from my part, it is, has been, and will always be a joyful pleasure to connect with each and everyone of you and be a constant reminder of impermanence with each passing GRD one year after another.
Enclosed is a picture of my grandfather, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche pointing his finger inward. Thinking of you all and keeping you all in the depth of my heart and aspiration.

Sarva Mangalam,
Phakchok Rinpoche

for more on Phakchok Rinpoche, please see: www.phakchokrinpoche.org/

The Grace of the Heavens Descending


Zacciah Blackburn, PhD
“The ancients have always known it, and have graced us with their wisdom teachings.  The Grace of the Heavens descends upon us, always.  And, the blessings of the Holy Ones, of all traditions, are with us constantly.
Do we realize it? Do we take the time to listen, to receive, to perceive the undaunting caress, the careening of gifts descending upon us at all times?  Or, do we focus our attention upon a small aspect of our lives, often that includes wounding or suffering, memories of calamity, loss, grief, stress, or chaos, or anticipation of such?  I do not mean to make light of the intense calamities and suffering so many of us face, or have faced.  Yet, it is true, what we focus our attention upon is what creates our reality.  It is our awareness, the level of consciousness we choose to embrace, which supercedes all other realities, no matter how evident they are.  As my good friend Freddy Silva is known to say, those who believe, know they have to believe to see.  Those who do not believe, believe they have to see to believe….”
Zacciah is a clear voice of the 2012 energies. He is a spiritual teacher, healer and educator who works with sound, the natural world and other ancient traditions. We have one of his crystal singing bowls that we use at home. If you would like to read the whole article please go to:
http://thecenteroflight.net/Article.The_Grace_Of_The_Heavens.html
his home page is: http://thecenteroflight.net/
…..

Mae-Wan Ho on the music of ‘life’

To get a feeling for the organism, imagine an immense super-orchestra, with instruments spanning the widest spectrum of dimensions from molecular piccolos of 1billionth of a meter up to a bassoon or a bass viol of a meter or more, performing over a musical range of seventy-two octaves. Incredible as it may seem, this super-orchestra never ceases to play out our individual lifelines, with a certain recurring rhythm and beat, but in endless variations that never repeat exactly. Always, there is something new, something made up as it goes along. It can change key, change tempo, change tune perfectly, as it feels like, or as the situation demands, spontaneously and without hesitation. What this super-orchestra plays is the most exquisite jazz, jazz being to classical music what quantum is to classical physics. One might call it quantum jazz. There is a certain structure, but the real art is in the endless improvisations, where each and every player, however small, enjoys maximum freedom of expression, while maintaining perfectly in step and in tune with the whole. There is no leader or conductor, and the music is written as it is played.